Looking for tips to make text look better

[colt4523]

The text on my dvd menus does not look as good as I want it to on my tv (looks washed out). I would like to make the text look more like what is on a professional dvd. Does anyone have any certain techniques or fonts/styles they prefer over others? I know you are suppose to stay away from fonts with tails (serifs). What fonts look great for dvds?

I use premiere to make motion menus and photoshop for all of my text. I than encode the avi to mpeg2 with TMPGEnc at a constant bitrate of 9500. Should I do anything differently on my conversion process?

thanks

[daamon]

Hi colt4523,

I often go here for inspiration for fonts: www.1001freefonts.com

Encoding at 9,500 kbps - while technically OK - is overkill in my opinion. Anything over 8,000 and I firmly believe that the difference isn't noticeable.

Also, some DVD players (even decent brands) struggle with such high bitrates during playback. When I first started out out, I thought a higher bitrate was better, I encoded DV AVI to MPEG2 for DVD at around 9,500 and the playback froze on a Toshiba.

I reduced the bitrate to 8,000 - didn't see any drop in quality and the playback was fine.

[guns1inger]

General guidelines for use of text
(These are guidelines - there are no absolutes)

1. Use San-serif fonts where possible
2. Keep the point size to at least 26 points or larger
3. Avoid fonts with very thin horizontal features
4. If you are getting interlace flicker, try applying a small vertical directional blur or guassian blur

dafont.com is my font site of choice.

[colt4523]

Thanks for the suggestions. My font troubles are mostly confined to motion backgrounds. I will try to encode them at a lower bitrate and see what happens.

[mikiem]

FWIW & all, fonts are vector on your PC, just about everywhere else they're just pictures. Use the same rules as you do in graphics.

Very Thin angled lines are prone to stairstep if not blended. Same with curves. A bigger font is thicker, a sans serif font is missing the serifs the dangly things which are usually small & pointy. In a studio (hopefully) the rendered fonts are blended into a shadow which is in turn faded out. If you're doing something for interlaced TV, try and boost thickness to avoid flicker when 1/2 the lines (1 field) fades.

Some video & authoring software helps with these chores -- Vegas has a nice reduce flicker for instance.

"looks washed out"
Often this can be minimized thru careful color choice, & sometimes adding an outline or a couple of shadows, 1 fading into the next. Really saturating the colors can be risky for TVs otherwise, in extreme cases messing not just with the video signal but causing audio prob too. Apps like P/Shop can check for NTSC or PAL legal.

"My font troubles are mostly confined to motion backgrounds."

Might want to look at another way of rendering them - not abandoning prem, but the methods you're using.

So far (knock on wood ) haven't had any problems so far, using just about any font in my collection. NOT bragging, just trying to say paying attention to the basics can work.